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Saturday, December 20, 2008

The first consideration in when selecting a campsite is comfort. Dry, slightly elevated ground, at least twenty feet away from any water source, is ideal. Once camp has been established, you can set out on hikes, etc., and in so doing, and with each return to camp, you will feel more secure in your choice. What is outside the perimeter of your camp will seem less hostile; what is inside will seem more wholesome. The exact perimeter of your camp will vary and depend on the terrain and the length of your stay. Over time, you may make slight improvements here and there. Don't forget to fill in your latrine and dig a new one every couple days. But camp will never seem like home. You are a stranger here. You have contracted to live here and to leave it as you found it, to the best of your ability. You cannot pack out your feces, but you will pack out your gear, and your memories, and your smell. The trees tolerate your presence. They say nothing and reveal less. Those within your camp perimeter may seem gentler than those outside. Your perspective shifts. Those outside seem more majestic. You want to camp further away from where you came from, your home. Check this impulse. Once you are home you can decide and plan on where to camp next, but do not camp from out of your present camp, not unless you have no home to compare your camp to. Go home first. You have contracted to go home.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Allow this rummaging post, as I move from what was to what will be. Unless this is the what will be: a rummager. Oh I hope not. I like projects. I like a beginning, a middle, and an end. I like a thing with shape. I like to shape things. I am like that.

My life is taken up lately with therapy, working on my depression and frustrated behaviors. It's a long story, featuring a variety of characters contributing emotional distance, negative modeling, and downright encouragement to act in ways I now find difficult to fathom, so poorly do they represent my heart. I have to say things are looking up. I feel inwardly vacant, true, but I am not feeling or doing or saying the sorts of things that have made living so terribly difficult these past several years. I have the support of family. I am pretty well off. Let's hope I can repay them with the same sort of kindness and respect they have shown me.

On the subject of subjects, I haven't any. I feel here and there the urge to write, but when I sit down to do it, Poof! All gone. So I sit here not getting frustrated, not getting ideas, scanning FaceBook at odd intervals for directed or lateral posts to respond to. And I play MyFarm, a virtual farm game. No, I haven't much to say except to hope for more from myself, but without bitterness. Just a quiet hope. I make myself available. I read, occasionally, I watch a little TV. I love movies with Jackson. Last night it was Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

I look forward to work, cautiously, where I do well, but which is in flux just now as we have a new group head. I am of course turning cartwheels to please her and think I do, but you have to remain cautious in such times. I look forward to Sundays. Endi and I are alternating attending the Friends Meeting at the meeting house on Stark. I must say, those meetings are just right for me. It's night and day compared to any regular church service, and really, the precepts match up fairly well with my understanding of what's been asked of us and was suggested for worship. There's more to be said, but not just now, as I continue to rummage and mention in a passing manner.

On to poetry. I recall believing that a poem is a thing to be written when something must be said for which there is no other vehicle or means for expression. And I suppose I must continue to believe that. I feel sometimes a tendency to write, and could probably manage something that looks and sounds like a poem, but I feel no urgency, and so at the outset would be unconvinceable. Even so, I recognize that I could surprise myself. I am interested lately in more experimental works and poetics, so perhaps there may be an opening soon for some more composed approach to writing.